Cheng Man-ching

There is a blog devoted to Cheng Man-ching. It seems to get one post a month. Nothing of real interest there, except their claim that his birth date was 1902 rather than 1900.

PSYCHOLOGY


The trouble is
most people spend their lives living it

down.

Lew Welch

If we attend to our inner aspect with the proper attention – a loving one – then our outer aspect will similarly attend to us. When we function well – lovingly, joyfully – then our outer aspect communicates directly with our inner: we are merely dancing channels.

Photo: Oded Arbel

Poetry was all written before time was… whenever we are finely organized we can penetrate into that region where the air is music

Emerson, quoted by Zukofsky

Inner & Outer

Energy is nested: each of us is like a set of Russian dolls. Inside us there is as though another entity – an aspect of our totality – that has been called the Inner Child – waiting to be acknowledged, encouraged and accepted. Similarly, outside us – surrounding us – there is another entity – also an aspect of our totality – that has variously been called our Higher Self, fully realised Self, Guardian (Angel), conscience, etc – waiting to be trusted and surrendered to. In all likelihood these two aspects of us also contain and are contained – it certainly feels that way. Awakening the one inside unlocks our past – takes us to times and events as yet unresolved – freeing valuable energy. Becoming aware of the one containing us unlocks our future – our destiny. Both of these entities have definite structures and the student of Tai Chi should realise that whenever she reaches out to yield or attack, she is stimulating part of that large entity, and whenever she draws energy into the body – up the legs from the Earth, or from the environment and Heavens through the arms and sense organs, she is feeding and stimulating the smaller, contained entity. She should also be aware that the most important action of the body – turning/twisting – is also responsible for taking our awareness (and thereby our energy) into these two entities. The spiral tightens into the smaller one and relaxes into the larger one. Embracing and containing the smaller entity naturally makes us aware of the embrace of the larger one that we are contained within. Imagine cradling a baby and you instantly feel cradled in turn by the energy surrounding you. In a sense this is just Ward-Off energy.

Relaxation loosens the grip our mind and body has on our energy. Then, and only then, can we begin to make energetic connexions. And only then will the intelligence of our energy reveal itself, and begin to take us into a richer reality.

Spirit

There is an aspect to spirit – almost a contrary bloody-mindedness – a refusal to go with the flow – a suspiciousness – that paradoxically binds and knits to reality with such intensity and fire, that you become a charged and fiery creature of Nature. By cutting through and against the flow you are slicing through your own slack and sleepy drifting, and biting fiercely into the arse of life to make it happen for you rather than comfortably waiting for it to make you happen. You then meet life as an equal and can have proper communication – communion – with it. It's just a matter of feeling the vector of momentum and pulling gently against it. This creates bulges of energy which you can squeeze into whichever parts of your life (body) you wish. The pulling is really just a refusal to be carried – a taking of responsibility. As far as I know it is the only way to cut through the bland and conventional reality we surround ourselves with, and start touching the energetic reality we should all be true participants to.

some nights
all we talk about

living outside the city
in a house
above a stream

Frank Samperi

Spirit borrows from matter the perceptions on which it feeds and restores them to matter in the form of movements which it has stamped with its own freedom.

Henri Bergson

The True Mind

When the thinking mind quietens it becomes clear that the body has a mind of its own. This mind is an aspect of the body's energy, and is literally wracked with trauma, insecurity, anxiety, fear, all because it has been suppressed and repressed by the thinking mind for almost as long as we have been alive. It connects naturally, and above all else it feels, and spontaneously and uncontrollably responds to feeling. This feeling comes from a vast and dark whirlpool – a forment and torment – which, when it flows into and through us, makes us truly aware and alive. When we begin to connect, tap and explore this whirlpool it also becomes clear that the thinking mind is a foreign body, consuming our energy and life for reasons of its own – tricking us into giving it all we have. It is for such a formidable enemy that we learn to yield – softening, deepening and patiently slipping beneath it. The centre of the whirlpool – the centre of the body – is the dan-tien: the navel, or just below. This centre is elastic – threads pull into it. It is a place established and strengthened early on by the baby's gut-wrenching crying – each sob a tightening into the belly – a continuation of the prenatal breathing of the foetus – the belly as centre of power and expression. When you centre yourself there as an adult – have it as centre of awareness – then the thinking mind relaxes its grip and the pool begins to swirl. The thinking mind – when it operates and commands – stops the swirling – rigidly setting and constricting the reality it perceives. That reality is in many ways easier to contend with that the ever-flowing – ever-whirling – one in evidence when the mind stops, so the world we live in when the mind thinks is to most of us preferable – an easier ride. Add to this the fact that for most of us the true mind – the body's mind – is still a baby – locked at that age our thinking mind took over – and you have an indication of just how difficult a task it is to switch our allegiance to the true mind and away from the thinking mind. But this is really the task for all of us, and only when embarked upon and travelled past the point of no return will the true meaning and significance of our lives become clear.

Alive & kicking.